Free Republic

More than two years after a precedent-setting move by the federal government cleared a path around environmental laws and legal challenges, the construction of a stretch of border fence across a deep canyon known as Smuggler's Gulch is set to begin next month. The project will require cutting earth from surrounding hills and filling in the canyon with more than 2 million cubic yards of dirt, an operation so large that critics fear disastrous environmental consequences. According to the latest plans from the U.S. Customs and Border Protection, the project will consist of constructing an earthen berm across the canyon...

PHYSICAL barriers: Rough terrain precludes a continuous wall and presents huge challenges for those trying to patrol the Mexican border A craggy border canyon in San Diego is difficult to monitor and too rough to handle much of a fence, so the federal government has come up with an idea - it will fill the 230-foot-deep chasm and get the dirt to do it by lopping off the tops of two nearby mesas. By smoothing out Smuggler's Gulch with enough dirt to fill 70,000 dump trucks, the U.S. Border Patrol expects to be able to better patrol one of San...